Paper 2

Cook, P. F., & Cleland, W. W. (1981). PH Variation of Isotope Effects in Enzyme-Catalyzed Reactions. 2. Isotope-Dependent Step Not pH Dependent. Kinetic Mechanism of Alcohol Dehydrogenase. Biochemistry (ACS), 1812-1815. Retrieved from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/bi00510a015

The beginning of this paper focuses broadly on pH effects on enzyme-catalyzed reactions. However, it also specifically details the kinetics and mechanism of alcohol dehydrogenase on pages 1812-1815. These pages of the paper were very useful for determining the arrow pushing mechanism and active residues for alcohol dehydrogenase. Although the paper was old, its findings were vital to our research on the ADH mechanism. Scheme 1 on page 1813 contains a complex pathway for the breakdown of ethanol to acetaldehyde using the ADH enzyme. However, distinct arrow pushing steps are not shown and we used our organic chemistry knowledge to reconstruct the mechanism on the website using the information from this paper.